Trayvon Martin Shooting: Another Neighborhood Watch leader's view

9:35 p.m. EST, March 14, 2012|Beth Kassab, Orlando Sentinel Columnist

The shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a Neighborhood Watch volunteer got me thinking: Is this what Neighborhood Watch is about these days? Pack heat, forget waiting on the cops and shoot?

It's the kind of thing that Cleave Frink, a Neighborhood Watch leader in Orlando's College Park, has thought a lot about.

He's been there. Well, not exactly in the same situation, but in the kind of scenario where he didn't want to wait for police before taking action.

Early one morning a few years ago he watched out his window as a man tried to break into his car. He called police.

"He's in my driveway ... I want to go after him," Frink said. "The dispatcher said stay in the house. But you're a guy and it's your castle and there's a huge motivation to want to go after him and be macho. I understand the intense feeling of, 'Oh, I have to go out there and do something.'"

But he didn't.

"I didn't know if the guy was armed," he said. "It made no sense for me to go out there."

That was a case where cooler heads prevailed. And while the suspect ran off a few minutes before police arrived, the officers caught up with him down the street. Frink identified him and he was arrested. The system worked like it should have.

Frink has a concealed weapons permit and owns a firearm. But when he's walking his neighborhood he doesn't carry a gun.

"I don't think it's prudent to patrol your neighborhood," he said. "I think that belongs to a police officer. Most people don't have that kind of training."

And training goes far beyond how to load the weapon and pull the trigger.

The most important aspect is actually mental preparedness, says David "Gunny" Schmidbauer, a retired Marine and manager and instructor at Shoot Straight in Apopka.

He cautions people who take his concealed weapons class not to go looking for trouble. Generally speaking, Florida law permits shooting in self defense if someone is in imminent danger or if a forcible felony is in progress.

But, he said, calling police is usually the best option.

"Just because you have a firearm, the last thing you want to do is to have to use it," he said. "Carrying a firearm is a modern martial art. Proficiency with the weapon is 5 to 10 percent of the art. The rest is mental preparation and physical conditioning."

And training is an important part of Neighborhood Watch as well. Many of the groups work with a law enforcement liaison.

In Orlando alone there are 905 block captains for 556 neighborhood groups, said Georgeanna Butler, neighborhood and business watch specialist for the Orlando Police Department.

"We do not want them to be vigilantes," she said. "That's a standard line in every meeting."

In unincorporated Seminole County there are 144 registered Neighborhood Watch groups, a Seminole Sheriff's spokeswoman said.